ER

Accessible for the casual, but at what cost?

Unfortunately, when it comes right down to it, the game doesn't require a lot of skill or dexterity. It's definitely aimed towards the casual gamer who's probably more a fan of the TV show than a fan of games. For those folks, they'll probably have a nice enough time talking with popular characters from the show and being a doctor. For me, though, it got a little monotonous. I think the main problem is that what I assumed was the crux of the game--performing operations and whatnot--is a matter of clicking on the patient and watching a progress dial go back and forth.

Sometimes their condition gets worse, and you don't have the skill to get them back down to your level, and must therefore shuffle them off to another doctor. Sometimes you put them in the wrong hospital bed and the nurse has to run off to get the supplies you need. But after a while, you learn how to avoid those problems, and the game becomes a factory line of diagnosing, sending to a bed, and healing them. Sure, sometimes you can't diagnose them and have to send them to the lab for testing, but that's pretty much the only consistent complication you might have to face.

Don't get me wrong--there is a structure to the game. You'll be given a steady trickle of missions, like treating specific people, locating certain people, and, treating specific medical conditions, and these are all on a timer, but these events seemed to both happen infrequently and happen when I was knee-deep in something else. Sometimes you'll be instructed to meet Joe Blow at the nurse's station, and you'll be given less than sixty seconds to comply. Unfortunately, you might already have been tasked with clearing out a surge of people in triage and will have to watch that room fill up, leading to getting harassed by the person who gave you that mission.

Also, many conversation segments disable your interface, and you're forced to watch people talk laboriously (no option to skip through dialogue that I could find) while people complain at you and your patients wait unattended. Making matters worse is that failure can lead to termination, which ends the game. The descriptor for some missions says "Fireable offense? Yes." This suggests that you're not guaranteed to get canned, but you are, and it's game over. There also appears to be a bug when you're calling security to haul someone out. The guard comes over to you, goes to the perp, walks back to you and then says he couldn't see the perp. It appears to have something to do with pathfinding, a factor in the game which was otherwise pretty polished, actually.

So while the gameplay is probably deep enough for the casual player, I found that the pacing was actually too slow. Sure, you have things thrown at you right and left, but it also takes many, many real hours to complete a single shift and advance the story, which is pretty much described by more missions. When you get tired, you sleep in the hospital. Get hungry, eat at the hospital cafeteria (and the hunger aspect is unfortunately hidden within the Energy meter, so sometimes your character will refuse to sleep because he or she is too hungry, which can cause you to pass out and lose valuable game time before you can eat).

The Verdict

Never leaving the hospital, and having only two storeys to navigate, and only treating patients on the ground floor can give you a feeling of cabin fever. When all you have to do is treat patients with the progress dial and occasionally talk to a fellow staff member, it just feels a little too much like work. Unlike The Sims, there are no objects to buy or structures to build to your liking. There's no additional set of clothes, no social gatherings, and no salary to spend anything on. Within these limitations, ER does well enough. But then again, the focus of the game becomes too narrow for anyone who doesn't love the show.